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Corrupted Hard Drive :(

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LAN_403

Chip Fixes

Fri Aug 05 2011, 06:05PM

Registered Member #3781 Joined: Sat Mar 26 2011, 02:25AM
Location:
Posts: 701

Ok I have a 320gb simpledrive and yesterday, when I plugged it into my computer it showed up but when I clicked the usb port to open it, I get an error message:
"E:/ is not accessible. The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable."
It was working fine a few weeks ago but it is a few years old. Is there anyway to fix the hard drive or do i have to use a software program to recover the files? Thanks in advance for any replies, the drive is our back up drive for the computers so there are a lot of important files on it

EDIT: I have both a Windows XP desktop and Windows 7 laptop

Adam Munich

Fri Aug 05 2011, 06:51PM

Registered Member #2893 Joined: Tue Jun 01 2010, 09:25PM
Location: Cali-forn. i. a.
Posts: 2242

Try testdisk, a free dos program.

It can do anything, even getting data off of drives that had a head crash on the master file table

Chip Fixes

Fri Aug 05 2011, 07:18PM

Registered Member #3781 Joined: Sat Mar 26 2011, 02:25AM
Location:
Posts: 701

Alright thanks, is the hard drive pretty much toast then?

Chip Fixes

Fri Aug 05 2011, 08:16PM

Registered Member #3781 Joined: Sat Mar 26 2011, 02:25AM
Location:
Posts: 701

Sorry for the double post but I am just going to use testdisk_win. I hit create a new log file > selected the broken hard drive > Selected Intel > Selected Analyse > and it gives me this image (below) should I do a quick search even though it says no partition is bootable?

1312575384 3781 FT121686 Empty Partition

EDIT: I did a search, found partition 1, wrote that partition to the drive and then rebooted. It still won't work, any ideas?

Adam Munich

Sat Aug 06 2011, 03:07AM

Registered Member #2893 Joined: Tue Jun 01 2010, 09:25PM
Location: Cali-forn. i. a.
Posts: 2242

Yeah, your MFT is probably fuk'd. What you'll have to do is get the files using testdisk.

* Select the drive and then go to [advanced] Filesystem Utils
* Then select your partition, and then select [list] at the bottom
* There you'll find the folder structure, where you can browse and copy files/folders off the disk, even if the MFT is corrupted to hell.

Chip Fixes

Sat Aug 06 2011, 04:15AM

Registered Member #3781 Joined: Sat Mar 26 2011, 02:25AM
Location:
Posts: 701

ah thank you

EDIT: Any suggestions of what to do with a broken computer hard drive?

EDIT EDIT: Just for kicks, does anyone know what a commercial hard drive recovery would cost if I were to take it into a repair shop? I just need an estimate

Conundrum

Thu Aug 11 2011, 06:20PM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

I would also clone the drive using Winhex NOW just in case it fails completely.

This has the advantage that you have a copy of the entire drive to work on while the original is with the data recovery guys.

If the drive just has a logical failure and is mechanically and electrically OK then
cloning has the advantage that the data is copied in its original form.
Meaning that even if they quote a ridiculous price for recovery you can then say "No" and use a free tool to get the important data back.

Start with a known clean (i.e. new) drive and copy data onto that.
Have done this before and it works even if the original drive has bad sectors...
Unlike Windows copy which just falls over in a heap if a single bad file is found.

Try these guys

as they have online analysis people.

-A

grythumn

Thu Aug 11 2011, 06:37PM

Registered Member #4021 Joined: Thu Jul 21 2011, 10:09PM
Location: Hanover, MD
Posts: 11

Camp Badger wrote ...

ah thank you

EDIT: Any suggestions of what to do with a broken computer hard drive?

After I've done as much recovery as I intend to, I disassemble them for the strong magnets in the head assembly. The platters are usually fun to play with too, although be careful, some shatter easily.

EDIT: I usually use linux-based recovery tools. I dump the drive, skipping and retrying bad sectors, with ddrescue (Note lack of underscores; dd_rescue is a different program), keep a compressed image in case I make things worse during recovery, and work on a temporary image. If you can mount the drive directly in a computer it generally works better than trying to work through a USB enclosure; a regular SATA controller is more flexible than most USB MSC, which usually won't even let you do a SMART query.

-R C

Chip Fixes

Thu Aug 11 2011, 09:44PM

Registered Member #3781 Joined: Sat Mar 26 2011, 02:25AM
Location:
Posts: 701

Ah thank you for the replies, I will keep the cloning in mind for next time. But I was able to successfully recover all the files with testdisk :D

Gunboat

Thu Sept 01 2011, 11:27AM

Registered Member #338 Joined: Thu Mar 23 2006, 12:28PM
Location:
Posts: 41

I have heard that the platters have platinum on them,cash them in! The magnets are super strong,keep them for 'simple' motors..

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